#dracula beyond stoker

[see-arcane]

I hope they accept any of yours but especially the Bad Ending partially because The People need to open their eyes on how they've been sleeping on his extremes

Sending this ^^^ vision to The People to let them know what they've been robbed of in the jillion Dracula Bad Ending where it always amounts to DRACULA WAS 2 COOL AND AWESOME AND HE TRICKED YOU ALL LOLLL

What about this, huh? What if the holiest love did some murder about it, huh?? What if???

[stragglewort]

So now that Dracula Daily is starting again I want to tell a little story. When the first emails were rolling out for it last year, I too was dealing with a Dracula of my own. That being a magazine, Dracula Beyond Stoker, that I had submitted a story to.

I need you all to understand the horrors. The terrors. The absolute situation I went through. For MONTHS I would get emails from Dracula Daily while also waiting for a response from the publisher, Dracula Beyond Stoker, but in the preview I'd just see "Dracula". So I would get all worried and excited, only for it to be my good friend John or like

Y'know

Not my publisher.

So you can imagine how I felt when I saw Drac in my emails, went "O,h it's just John again." And MISSED THE ACCEPTANCE EMAIL FROM MY PUBLISHER FOR LIKE A FULL DAY

Abywho I got paid to write gay Dracula fanfic about our Good Friend, it's called Friendship and Hospitality in Issue One of DBS. I hope you all like it.

[mossworth]

Oh! Yeah, mine was the second story in the first issue of Dracula Beyond Stoker Magazine. "Friendship and Hospitality". It's in there with a few other fiction stories, some poetry and an essay all centered around Dracula. Personally, my absolute favorite story from my issue was Death of an Adversary by Jill Protokowicz. If you read none of it, mine included, I urge you to read Jill's!

I think you can buy a copy off dbspress.com (the publisher's website) or do what I did and request/see if there's a copy at your local library!

This was not the Dracula lore drop I was expecting today.

[evydraws]

Dracula prints and the original acrylic painting (with brushes and paint tubes for size)

[noahsbookhoard]

📚November 2024 Book Review📚

November was a bit less busy that October and varies from jawdropping to very meh.

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone (Ernest Cunningham #1) by Benjamin Stevenson

That one is definitely in the jawdropping category. A great murder mystery in which you have all the keys and the author is right there telling you to "go ahead and solve it". I didn't. I had fun anyway. Just as darkly funny as the title announces.

Wintersmith (Discworld #34) by Terry Pratchett

I think sofar it is my favorite Tifanny Aching story: she is growing up and that shows, she is more responsible, she owns up to what she does wrong, she is still whip smart and I never get tired of the Nac Mac Feegle.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

This count as a novel read since I completed Dracula Daily like everyone on nov 8. The audio drama version by Bloody FM production is so good and a great plus because some of Van Helsing lecture at John are really just too long.

Une belle vie by Virginie Grimaldi

I don't know why but I ended up reading 3 Grimaldi in as many months, maybe because they are rather easy to read, funny and generally have a hopeful vives even when dealing with heavy themes. This one is the story of two estranged sister who reconnect by coming for one last vacation in their grand mother house before they sell it. They rebuilt their relationship and draw back childhood memories, some good and some bad. The part where I got confused is that the author tries to tackle a lot of subjects (bipolarity, depression, domestic violence and cancer are the ones I remember but there are many) instead of just one are two. It was a lot to handle at times but a good read nonetheless.

The Restaurang at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #2) by Douglas Adams

Book 2 is just as crazy as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I found it a little more coherent, as in I knew approximately where we were going (a restaurant) and the convoluted adventure that leads to and from it made more sense to me than in book 1. I'm really excited for the rest of the series.

L'amant by Marguerite Duras

I admit, I don't see the appeal. The writing is good but not incredibly so. The story itself is rambling, I guess it was intentional but it makes it harder to follow. The relationship between the author as a girl and her lover at least 10 years older is very disturbing when judge by modern standards and I was a little put off by the casual way she talks about her brother's death. I must have missed the literary qualities here but I might try another of her novel later on.

La Dame du manoir de Wildfell Hall (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) by Anne Brontë

I felt so much fucking rage reading this novel! It has some of the most heinous male characters I have ever read and even the main love interest has a hell of a journey to stop being an entitled jealous violent piece of shit. That said it is very well written otherwise I would have either given up or thrown the whole thing through the window. Helen, the main character is strong minded and brave, I loved her from the start and grew even warmer. I strongly recommend it.

Tw for domestic abuse and alcoholism.

The Sword Catcher (Chronicles of Castelane #1) by Cassandra Clare

This was an indulgence: I said I wanted to read less traditional medieval heroic fantasy and it falls right into it. It is good tho! I liked the concept of the Sword Catcher and the Ragpicker King amd especially how the two characters interact. I really hope the relationship between Connor and Kel is explored more too in the future books because the homoerotic subtext deserve to be more text than that!

Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean #2) T J Klune

I loved The House in the Cerulean Sea so I was excited for the sequel, but a little weary too. I was afraid not to find what made book 1 so dear to me. But there it was! The kids and their shenanigans, Arthur and Linus being their lovey dovey selves, Zoey and Helen are all the village had kept its newly opened mind from the end of book 1 and that was very comforting. The story is hard, the hate and fear they face hits a little too close. But they overcome it and everything ends well which is just what I wanted to read.

The kids calling Arthur and Linus Dad and Papa was extremely cute. I really loved David and how he bonded with Lucy. Not a comfort book as much as the first one but I had a great time reading it

My Roommate is a Vampire by Jenna Levine

I stumbled upon this one because I watched this video of a person who read all the Rylo fanfic turned novels out of morbid curiosity and this one seemed intriguing enough for me to try, open mind and all that. I was promised some whimsy, a shopping montage and a heist.

Well there's comedy (an kumquats for some reason) The shopping montage wasn't much of a montage, they just went and tried t-shirts on. But the end was just stupid: female lead went ahead with a plan she deems stupid and unlikely to work, us reader with even the tiniest bit of social media experience know that the plan is stupid and can't possibly work. And it works. Just genuinely first degree work. When you go with that in a comedy setting at least make your stupid plan work in a funny way, WWDITS style! Some bits are tedious, I understand your 400 year old don't know how to use Instagram but I do and I don't need a full chapter of tutorial (same chapter as my newest fight with my nemesis, the possessiveness trope, you don't get to storm off and brood just cause she posted bikini pics dude!)

Overall it was quite fun if you don't think to much about it.

When Among Crows by Veronica Roth

I listen to the audio book and the accents were *chef kiss*: it is a novella with slavic folklore creatures in an modern setting and I wasn't expecting to love it so much!! It's a story about monsters and family and duty. Angsty, a bit gay, the characters relationship work very well. It will be a reread in the future.Greatest of news for me today! I discovered by googling the spelling of characters names that a second book is coming this year!

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

I was toying with the idea of ranking adaptations based on how book accurate they are.

But honestly, more than half the entries would come down to "this is not trying to be the book" because a lot of the media that is based on the book is loosely based on it. Especially things that just want to have a vampire and Van Helsing.

A remarkable amount of Dracula media simply isn't about Dracula the book.

[mossworth]

If one more Draculadaptation looks me dead in the eye and says with a straight face that Wilhelmina "I Was Given A Gun And Sent Away Because If I Were Allowed To Murder Count Dracula With My Bare Hands It Would've Been Too Violent For The People Around Me To Handle I Hate Him With Every Fiber Of My Being He Traumatized My Husband And Killed My Best Friend, Van Helsing Only Went Into The Castle Alone Because If I Was There It Would've Burst Into Flames From My Hatred Alone Also The Matches In My Pocket And Completely Intentional Act Of Arson I've Been Planning Since Jonathan Came Home From Budapest" Harkrer fell desperately in love with Dracula I'm going to scream

I’m not bitter

[nocturn-warrior]

Ne t'enfuis pas

Adrian Ţepeş x reader

Summary: You are his first love reincarnated and after 300 years, you finally meet again.

Rating: fluff, hurt, comfort

Warnings: mentions of death, grief, Nocturn season 2 spoilers!!!

Nmed after Kate Bush's Ne T'enfuis Pas. This is heavily inspired in Bram Stoker's Dracula by Coppola and mayyybe Nosferatu by Eggers <3 It's been so long since i've written, i am honestly rusty. Sorry for taking so long with this one.

The water in the pond behind the chateau reflects the light of the crescent pale moonlight above your head. It is the first time in weeks since you could go outside after the sunset without worrying about getting your neck attacked by a servant of the Bloody Countess or a night creature. Small tadpoles swim around, feeding on bugs that have the misfortune of falling in the pond and you watch them idly and with a childlike curiosity. You didn’t want to ruminate at that moment, you wanted to think that everything was going to be fine. 

Still, your unquiet mind couldn’t rest. The scene of the tadpole rapidly consuming the bug reminds you of your own thoughts consuming you. The dreams you’ve had before his arrival; a dark castle with infinite stairs, forests that you’ve never explored, and flashes of scenes flooding your mind every time he is near that feel so much more real than a mere dejavú. But how could you ever put this into words?

Smooth steps are heard padding against the grass and you softly gasp when you see the tall, pale man coming to the spot you are sitting on. His amber eyes glow like the ones of a cat in a dark night as he walks in the shadow announcing his not fully human nature. 

“They are beheading the last one of the day. Won’t you like to see the show?”

Alucard asks with sarcasm, sitting on the opposite side of the pond in a pompous swish. The city's in ruins, but the people are executioning the aristocrats who stood in the side of the vampires during the attack. You don’t answer his question. In fact, the two of you stay in silence for a while, but now and then you peek through the fountain to see if he is still in there and he is perfectly immobile like a beautiful statue in the garden, except for his flouncy hair tousled by the soft breeze. In one of those moments of curiosity, your gazes meet and it feels intense as a lightning hitting your body, Alucard could see your hair standing on end.

“Although I think they should pay for what they did, I don't see the point of gathering in the town to see bloodshed. I’ve seen enough of this in the last few days.”

You answer in an awkward way and twirl your finger around the water, making the tadpoles hide behind a rock to dismiss the feeling that goes beyond embarrassment. Alucard narrows his eyes, cautiously watching your expression, wondering if approaching you now was the right choice. But how long could he keep this to himself? If there is something Alucard learned during these wandering 300 years is that human life is feeble as a crystal, that he’ll see his pals one by one perish to the fog of time. Leaving it be, ignoring the signals would spare him from the very known feeling of grief. Still, there you are. With another appearance, voice and name, yet eyes are the windows of the soul, they say, and Alucard lived enough to know that this might be true. And since yours met during the Eclipse, he knew that calling coming from overseas was not only his duty of destroying Sekhmet’s mummy. He was drawn to your presence like a boat to a lighthouse.

“May i?”

He asks before sitting on the same side as you on the pond, so pale that he seems to emanate his own light and reflect in the pond along with the moon. You nod and he graciously settles himself some palms away not wanting to be invasive, minutely investigating the possibilities and to what paths would they guide him. Your mind is racing with thoughts, so many it could burst. A feeling of urgency that takes you completely and is shared with the man by your side. Gathering forces from an ancient feeling asleep for so too long, you finally speak:

“You have found me… how?”

He hums looking into the pond before answering your question that is so easy to answer yet difficult to put into words when he measures the consequences.

“I felt you calling me.”

You shortly breathe, reminding the nights where that feeling of emptiness would set in as if there was something missing and you would pray for a light, something that could give you a clue of what was the other part of the whole. The dreams that filled your sleep in the following nights left you even more puzzled, but when Alucard arrived, everything was starting to be put in place, for more unbelievable that sounded. 

Before you died, you made Alucard promise that he would find someone else. That he wouldn't have his eternity tied to your memory, that he would find other lovers to fulfill his heart and to give him the love he deserved. Your shaking cold hand held his as you collapsed to smallpox in your deathbed and finally the eyes of your mortal body closed forever. He did as promised. Tens of women and men crossed his path across those thirty decades, but no one of them were you. The same emptiness your oblivious, reborn self would experience now, the dhampir would drag along the mists of years; for you, what was an unknown spectrum, for him it was a very palpable feeling that seemed to almost materialize itself.

Your eyes fill up with tears, a rush of emotions suddenly rises as Alucard watches you break down, still hesitant. His slender hand reaches out to touch your shoulder and you shudder; like the sun coming out from the clouds, a myriad of memories start to bloom. Alucard’s eyes are wide open in shock, harm of fear is the last thing he wants to inflict on you. But how could he have been causing it when all you could see in front of your eyes was him and your life together? Piece by piece like a broken porcelain, you see snippets of the past. 

You suddenly wrap your arms around his shoulders, a hug so unpredictable and strong that Alucard had to hold onto the bricks of the pond otherwise you would fall directly into it. Once steady, He slowly retributes the hug, face resting on the crook of your neck as you sob tears of unbelievable happiness into his white hair. A small salty droplet roams his cheek too and when he realizes the emotional boy he used to be was here again. Slowly, you pull off from the embrace, drying your tears with the sleeves of your dress and say while cupping his angelical face in your hands, strands of white hair sticking onto his skin. You smile and say before pressing a gentle kiss onto his lips:

“And you came to me… from the sky like an angel.”

[thethirdromana]

More travels with Jonathan Harker, in pictures

Here's the route that Jonathan travels by the public coach today:

I've tried to find copyright-free photos from the actual route, but I've not had much success. So this tour is going to be a lot more vibes-based than reflective of the actual sights out of the stagecoach window. Think of it like Jonathan's Transylvanian Pinterest board.

(Scenery photos are all of Transylvania, assuming I can trust the sites where I found them, but not necessarily the right time of year or the right bit of Transylvania. It's a big place.)

"Before us lay a green sloping land full of forests and woods, with here and there steep hills, crowned with clumps of trees or with farmhouses, the blank gable end to the road."

"There was everywhere a bewildering mass of fruit blossom—apple, plum, pear, cherry; and as we drove by I could see the green grass under the trees spangled with the fallen petals."

"In and out amongst these green hills of what they call here the "Mittel Land" ran the road, losing itself as it swept round the grassy curve, or was shut out by the straggling ends of pine woods, which here and there ran down the hillsides like tongues of flame."

"Beyond the green swelling hills of the Mittel Land rose mighty slopes of forest up to the lofty steeps of the Carpathians themselves. Right and left of us they towered, with the afternoon sun falling full upon them and bringing out all the glorious colours of this beautiful range, deep blue and purple in the shadows of the peaks, green and brown where grass and rock mingled, and an endless perspective of jagged rock and pointed crags, till these were themselves lost in the distance, where the snowy peaks rose grandly."

"As we wound on our endless way, and the sun sank lower and lower behind us, the shadows of the evening began to creep round us. This was emphasised by the fact that the snowy mountain-top still held the sunset, and seemed to glow out with a delicate cool pink."

"By the roadside were many crosses, and as we swept by, my companions all crossed themselves."

"Sometimes, as the road was cut through the pine woods that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us, great masses of greyness, which here and there bestrewed the trees, produced a peculiarly weird and solemn effect, which carried on the thoughts and grim fancies engendered earlier in the evening, when the falling sunset threw into strange relief the ghost-like clouds which amongst the Carpathians seem to wind ceaselessly through the valleys."

And a bonus: Bran Castle is marked as 'Dracula's Castle' despite being even further away from the locations in the book than most of my vibes-based photography choices. It also doesn't resemble Bram Stoker's descriptions of the castle.

But more importantly, it looks really cool. So here it is:

[see-arcane]

The submissions for Harker closed yesterday so your things will be read soon enough!

Oh man I almost forgot about that! Everyone cross your fingers and toes for one of my little scribbles to get in the Jonathan Harker anthology

And also:

THERE IS A MINA HARKER ANTHOLOGY ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS MAY 1 - JUNE 30!

[see-arcane]

HELLO!????!!?!!?!?

Dracula lovers, this may be of interest to you: Dracula Beyond Stoker Press, which specialized in publishing all things Dracula, including short stories, will have an open call for short stories about our friend Jonathan.

Starting Nov. 1st and ending December 31st, the Jonathan Harker Anthology Open Call starts soon! Wordcount 1500-5000. AND accepted pieces will be paid (55 dollars).

[achromatophoric]

Pre-Wenclair. The gang is gathered around a table in the Quad, watching closely as Ajax shows off his secret talent.

Ajax: Almost… almost…

*ka-chk*

Ajax: There! Check it!

The crowd reacts with gasps of astonishment as Ajax shows off the now open padlock. A single snake is free of his beanie, tongue flicking in pride.

Kent: My dude! That was effin’ sweet!

Bianca: How the heck did you find out your snakes could even do that?

Yoko: And with their freaking tongue.

Ajax: *shrugs* Eh, don’t remember exactly. I was high as balls.

Enid: *laughs* That checks out. Still cool, though!

Enid: *whispers aside to Wednesday* See, Ajax isn’t totally useless.

Wednesday:

Enid: Wednesday? *glances over*

Instead of Wednesday’s usual expression of flat disdain, she wears a mixed look of keen interest and alarmed confusion as she stares at Ajax. If Enid didn’t know better, she might even say that her roommate was ever so slightly… blushing?

Enid: *looks between Wednesday and Ajax in growing horror*

Enid: 😱

Enid: *panicked shout* AJAX! Quick, who wrote Bram Stoker’s Dracula?!

Ajax: *looks over* Huh? Oh, um… Stephenie Meyer, right?

Wednesday: *blinks once*

Ajax: Wait! No, it’s uh— *snaps fingers* —Anne Rice! Anne Rice wrote Bram Stoker’s Dracula!

Wednesday: *blinks again, then glares at Ajax in disgust*

Enid: *holds her breath*

Wednesday: *scornful mutter* How that worthless imbecile manages to not drown in the rain is beyond me.

Enid: *exhales in relief* Oh thank the moon…

Ajax: Oh! Rob Zombie! Or maybe Simon Belmont? Wesley Snipes? Am I close??

[kaydensb]

100% Legally Sourced Media (Google Drive)

Here is a link for a whole bunch of movies, tv shows and more - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15yd2vLoCzlTDknjTgo965gCoAV8S0Emt

below is a list of the things currently on my google drive, I may add more and keep updating this list periodically as things get put on the drive.

Audiobooks and Audio Dramas

Fiction

1984 By George Orwell

Animal Farm By George Orwell

Chemistry By Rachael Sommers

Daisy Jones and the Six By Taylor Jenkins Reid

David Copperfield By Charles Dickens

Dracula By Bram Stoker

Eve of Man Series By Tom Fletcher & Giovanna Fletcher

Frankenstein By Mary Shelley

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe By Fanny Flagg

Friends of Dorothy By Sandi Toksvig

Gothic Tales By Arthur Conan Doyle

Jurassic Park By Michael Crichton

Little Women By Louisa May Alcott

Neon Roses By Rachel Dawson

Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen

Red, White & Royal Blue By Casey McQuiston

Should Have Known Better By A J McDine

The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection By Arthur Conan Doyle

The Exorcist By William Peter Blatty

The Honey Witch By Sydney J. Shields

The Murder Game By Tom Hindle

The Picture of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde

The Woman in Black By Susan hill

The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop By Fannie Flagg

Torchwood

We Play Games by Sarah A. Denzil

When You Least Expect It By Haley Cass

Non Fiction

A Billion Years My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology By Mike Rinder

All I Know Now By Carrie Hope Fletcher

Apparently There Were Complaints By Sharon Gless

Bad Gays A Homosexual History By Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

Best Foot Forward By Adam Hills

Between the Stops By Sandi Toksvig

Beyond Belief By Jenna Miscavige

Blown for Good - Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology By Marc Headley

Boy From the Valleys By Luke Evans

Coming Up for Air By Tom Daley

Dare to Dream By Izzy Judd

David Bowie Made Me Gay - 100 Years of LGBT Music By Darryl W Bullock

Deaf Utopia By Nyle DiMarco

Escaping the Kingdom of God By J. Andrew Robinson

Fathomless Riches By Rev Richard Coles

Freddie Mercury The Definitive Biography By Lesley-Ann Jones

Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing By Matthew Perry

From Here to the Great Unknown A Memoir By Lisa Marie Presley & Riley Keough

Help I S*xted My Boss By William Hanson & Jordan North

Mama’s Boy By Dustin Lance Black

Notorious by Raphael Rowe

Sh**ged. Married. Annoyed By Chris Ramsey & Rosie Ramsey

The House of My Mother By Shari Franke

The Mayor of Castro Street By Randy Shilts

The Phantom Prince By Elizabeth Kendall

Under the Banner of Heaven By Jon Krakauer

Under the Bridge By Rebecca Godfrey

Documentaries and Docudramas

A Very British Sex Scandal

Abused By My Girlfriend

Aids - The Unheard Tapes

Alex Brooker: Disability and Me

Bad Influencer - The Great Insta Con

Bowie - The Man Who Changed The World

Boyzone: No Matter What

Children of the Underground

Dancing for the Devil - The 7M TikTok Cult

Daughters of the Cult

Desperately Seeking Soulmate - Escaping Twin Flames Universe

Dinosaurs - The Final Day with David Attenborough

Dirty Pop - The Boy Band Scam

Driven - The Billy Monger Story

Escaping Polygamy

Escaping Twin Flames

Freddie Mercury - The Great Pretender

Frozen Planet

Frozen Planet II

Good Grief with Reverend Richard Coles

Hatton Garden - The Inside Story

Hell Camp - Teen Nightmare

I Am Not A Rapist

I Cut Off His Penis - The Truth Behind The Headlines

Ireland's Mother and Baby Scandal

Killing Patient Zero

Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath

Lewis Capaldi - How I'm Feeling Now

Liar: The Fake Grooming Scandal

Living Every Second: The Kris Hallenga Story

Lord Montagu

Mama's Boy

Matt Willis: Fighting Addiction

Murdaugh Murders - A Southern Scandal

Murder Among the Mormons

My Wife My Abuser - Captured On Camera

Pennywise - The Story of It

Planet Earth

Planet Earth II

Queen - Days Of Our Lives

Sacred Soil - The Piney Woods School Story

Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice

Scientology: Going Clear - The Prison of Belief

Soham: The Murder of Holly & Jessica

Stolen Youth - Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence

Strike - An Uncivil War

Strike! The Women Who Fought Back

Striking with Pride: United at the Coalface

Surviving Amber Heard

Take Care of Maya

The Bambers : Murder at the Farm

The Boys - The Sherman Brothers' Story

The Exorcist Untold

The Family

The Krays - The Mafia Connection

The Menendez Brothers

The Millennium Dome Heist With Ross Kemp

The Movies That Made Us

The Pembrokeshire Murders - Catching the Gameshow Killer

The Program - Cons, Cults and Kidnapping

The Times of Harvey Milk

Uprising

Waco - American Apocalypse

Warren Jeffs: Prophet of Evil

Wonders of the World I Can't See

Films

A Haunting in Venice

About a Boy

All of Us Strangers

Bad Tidings

Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Thing

Beetlejuice

Boy Erased

Boys Don’t Cry

But I'm a Cheerleader

Chocolat

City of Lies

Clue

Cool Runnings

Corpse Bride

Dallas Buyers Club

Dawn of the Dead

Death on the Nile

Deck the Halls

Die Hard

Dirty Dancing

Donnie Brasco

Downton Abbey

Edward Scissorhands

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fried Green Tomatoes

From Hell

Gone Girl

Gremlins

Hairspray

Handsome Devil

Heathers

Heathers - The Musical

Home Alone

Hot Fuzz

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

IT

Jaws

Jingle All The Way

Jumanji

Jurassic Park

Kill Your Darlings

Kindergarten Cop

Kinky Boots

Labyrinth

Legally Blonde

Legend

Les Misérables

Les Misérables: The Staged Concert

Little Shop of Horrors

Little Women

Love Actually

Mean Girls

Milk

Minamata

Miracle on 34th Street

Murder on the Orient Express

Murdered for Being Different

Newsies

Oliver!

Philadelphia

Pirates of the Caribbean

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Prayers For Bobby

Pride

Pride and Prejudice

Red, White and Royal Blue

Rent

Scarface

Scream

Scrooged

Secret Window

Shaun of the Dead

Sister Act

Sleepy Hollow

Star Wars

Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

The Addams Family

The Amityville Horror

The Blair Witch Project

The Conjuring

The Craft

The Crow

The Exorcist

The Greatest Showman

The imitation Game

The Muppet Christmas Carol

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Santa Clause

The Shawshank Redemption

The Sixth Sense

The Sound of Music

The Tourist

The Woman in Black

Three Men and a Baby

Three Men and a Little Lady

Titanic

Twister

Uncle Buck

Unicorns

West Side Story

What We Did on Our Holiday

White Christmas

Zola

Stand Up Comedy

Adam Hills

Chris McCausland

Chris Ramsey

Daniel Howell

Daniel Sloss

Dara O'Briain

Ed Byrne

Fern Brady

Greg Davies

John Bishop

Rhod Gilbert

Sarah Millican

Sean Lock

TV Shows

90210

Agatha All Along

Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled

Being Human

Bridgerton

Celebrity Race Across the World

Criminal Minds

Cuckoo

Daisy Jones and the Six

Deadwater Fell

Desperate Housewives

Doctor Who

Downton Abbey

Eyewitness

Fellow Travelers

Fire Country

Good Omens

Good Trouble

Heartstopper

I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!

Interview with the Vampire

It's A Sin

Killing Eve

Looking

Mary & George

Midnight Mass

Missing You

My Family

My Wife and Kids

Nevermind the Buzzcocks

QI 

Queer as Folk

Shameless

Sky Med

Sleepy Hollow

Switched at Birth

Taskmaster

The Alienist

The Artful Dodger

The Clearing

The Couple Next Door

The Fosters

The Haunting of Bly Manor

The Haunting of Hill House

The Jetty

The Midnight Club

The Misinvestigations of Romesh Ranganathan

The Pembrokeshire Murders

The Perfect Couple

The Society

The Stranger

The Unofficial Science Of…

The Watcher

Torchwood

Under the Banner of Heaven

Under the Bridge

Virgin River

WandaVision

White House Farm

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Hi there, I’m planning on writing gothic/gothic romance fiction. Do you have any tips?

Do you also have any tips to not make your writing too repetitive? I have a habit of repeating words a lot.

Writing Notes: Gothic Fiction

Gothic Novel

European Romantic pseudomedieval fiction having a prevailing atmosphere of mystery and terror.

Its heyday was the 1790s, but it underwent frequent revivals in subsequent centuries.

Called Gothic because its imaginative impulse was drawn from medieval buildings and ruins, such novels commonly used settings such as castles or monasteries equipped with subterranean passages, dark battlements, hidden panels, and trapdoors.

The Gothic is characterized by its darkly picturesque scenery and its eerie stories of the macabre.

It draws its name and aesthetic inspiration from the Gothic architectural style of the Middle Ages ⁠— crumbling castles, isolated aristocratic estates, and spaces of decrepitude are familiar settings within the genre.

Gothic fiction is rooted in blending the old with the new.

As such, it often takes place during moments of historical transition, from the end of the medieval era to the beginnings of industrialization.

Contemporary technology and science are set alongside ancient backdrops, and this strange pairing helps create the pervasive sense of uncanniness and estrangement that the Gothic is known for.

Past & present fold in on each other; even as man’s technological advancements seem to make him increasingly powerful, history continues to haunt.

Elements of Gothic Literature

The Gothic is a genre of spiritual uncertainty: it creates encounters with the sublime and constantly explores events beyond explanation. Whether they feature supernatural phenomena or focus on the psychological torment of the protagonists, Gothic works terrify by showing readers the evils that inhabit our world.

CHARACTERS

Characters in Gothic fiction often find themselves in unfamiliar places, as they — and the readers — leave the safe world they knew behind.

Ghosts are right at home in the genre, where they’re used to explore themes of entrapment and isolation, while omens, curses, and superstitions add a further air of mystery.

ATMOSPHERE

Eeriness is as important as the scariness of the events themselves.

In a Gothic novel, the sky seems perpetually dark and stormy, the air filled with an unshakable chill.

THEMES

In addition to exploring spooky spaces, Gothic literature ventures into the dark recesses of the mind: the genre frequently confronts existential themes of madness, morality, and man pitted against God or nature.

Physical and mental ruin go hand in hand — as the ancient settings decay so do the characters’ grips on reality.

History of Gothic Literature

The vogue was initiated in England by Horace Walpole’s immensely successful The Castle of Otranto (1765).

His most respectable follower was Ann Radcliffe, whose The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797) are among the best examples of the genre.

A more sensational type of Gothic romance exploiting horror and violence flourished in Germany and was introduced to England by Matthew Gregory Lewis with The Monk (1796).

The classic horror stories Frankenstein (1818), by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker, are in the Gothic tradition but introduce the existential nature of humankind as its definitive mystery and terror.

Easy targets for satire, the early Gothic romances died of their own extravagances of plot.

But Gothic atmospheric machinery continued to haunt the fiction of such major writers as:

Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Brontë, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and even Charles Dickens in Bleak House and Great Expectations.

In the second half of the 20th century, the term was applied to paperback romances having the same kind of themes and trappings similar to the originals.

Tips on Writing Gothic Fiction

SETTING

Gothic fiction can, of course, be set anywhere – but 2 key components of Gothic settings are as follows:

Gothic settings are isolated – a small community, a rural town, a single-family home on the open moors… wherever your Gothic story takes place, make sure that the setting is in isolation from the rest of the world. Places that are difficult to get to, with small populations, or are only home to one family or small group of people are ideal for weaving a Gothic tale. Even if your characters are not physically isolated – maybe they live in a city, for example – their isolation should be present in some way; maybe emotionally, maybe socially. There are plenty of options therein.

Gothic settings revolve around a home base – not necessarily a home or house, though that is quite common; but, with almost every Gothic tale, a central setting is introduced very quickly and almost all the action takes place inside or around it. This furthers that feeling of isolation, and also helps the house or laboratory or island or whatever else feel alive, as if it is a character itself.

These settings are often fun to develop and aid the story so, so much by being atmospheric and anthropomorphic.

By creating a strong setting and central location, you are setting up your Gothic fiction for success.

VOICE & CHARACTER

A strong voice, usually in first person, is a staple of Gothic fiction.

Gothic main characters are usually curious, determined, and unable to rest until whatever is going on around them is uncovered.

They are not faint of heart and often have experience dealing with hardship in the past; they are uniquely qualified for whatever disturbing events are going on.

Your character’s voice should be curious, but not paranoid; apprehensive, but not frightened or cowardly; and, above all, interesting.

As many Gothic are written in first person, you want your main character to take action and investigating the goings-on.

ATMOSPHERE

Similar to setting, it’s important to focus on atmosphere. Make sure you appeal to the five senses – let your reader know how it sounds, smells, feels!

The more details, the better; immerse your reader by making them feel as if they are actually in the space.

Often, as mentioned, Gothic novels take place in areas that are remote, experience frequent storms or bad weather, or otherwise have a very ominous environment.

Of course, Gothic novels can take place anywhere, but the takeaway here is to remember to highlight aspects that go beyond the visual.

SUBGENRE

Know what the genre within your Gothic work is or is going to be.

Are you writing a Gothic romance? A Gothic thriller? A Gothic horror? There are even types of books one might categorize as a “cozy Gothic” – taking the elements of a cozy mystery, but with a Gothic setting and characters.

There are some very specific geographical locations and time periods for Gothics, Victorian or Regency-era Northern England being a couple of them; but they are not all set in Europe in the 19th century, nor should they be.

Consider such settings as seen in Southern Gothic in the 2020s, for example, or Canadian Gothic (set anywhere in Canada, but usually southern and rural Ontario) in the late 90s, among many others. These are only a few examples of hundreds!

Dark academia titles can often fall into the Gothic genre as well, and, of course there are Gothic fantasy and sci-fi titles as well.

Carefully consider what sub-genre your Gothic fiction falls under before writing it, or during the early stages of writing as your work gets fleshed out. It may fall under just one category, or multiple! Either way, knowing this will help you write and later market your title.

MARKETING

Think about marketing at an early stage. Make it clear that it is a Gothic novel!

And consider publishing your title at a time when the Gothic genre might be in higher demand, such as during the month of October or the winter in general.

Appeal to fans of grim stories, horror romance, and what have you by theming your marketing.

If writing a Gothic novel is new for you, be sure to highlight that!

It can be exciting when an author tries out a new genre and moves into a new literary space. Be sure to let your readers know of this new venture.

Gothic Romance

As a genre, gothic fiction was first established with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto in 1764. Characterized by a dark, foreboding atmosphere and outlandish, sometimes grotesque, characters and events, gothic fiction has flourished and branched off into many different subgenres in the centuries since its creation.

While Walpole introduced what would later become the definitive tropes of the genre (creepy castles, cursed families, gloomy atmosphere), it was not until Ann Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance in 1790 that gothic romance began to develop as its own legitimate subgenre.

Radcliffe kept many of the same tropes established by Walpole’s work, such as isolated settings with semi-supernatural phenomena; however, her novels featured female protagonists battling through terrifying ordeals while struggling to be with their true loves.

This concept is what separates gothic romance from its cousin, gothic horror.

Female leads would come to dominate gothic romance, especially after the publication of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in 1847.

A young woman struggling to maintain her independence as she falls for a dark, brooding, handsome man became a genre-defining plot of gothic romances published in the decades that followed.

A renewed public interest in gothic romance came on the heels of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca upon its publication in 1938.

Authors such as Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart, and Phyllis A. Whitney dominated the gothic romance trade paperback market from the 1960s to the 1990s.

The image of a young woman running away from a darkened castle became a staple of gothic romance novel covers.

In 1983, Gaywyck, by Vincent Virga, became the first published gay gothic romance.

Modern additions to the genre continue to reflect its interest in both terror and romance, while also delivering updated or reimagined versions of familiar tropes.

Tips for Avoiding Word Repetition

While repeating a word or phrase can add emphasis and rhythm to your writing, it can also make your writing awkward and difficult to read. When you’re not using repetition as a rhetorical device, repeating words can get in the way of good writing. Here are some tricks for avoiding unnecessary repetition of words:

Read your work aloud. Reading aloud will help you avoid unintentional word repetition. Reading your work aloud is an excellent way to both hear the sonic effects of your prose and catch awkward repeated sounds or other unintended effects.

Read your work backward. Reading your work backward is an editing trick that forces your brain to slow down and pay close attention to the individual sentences. Start at the end of a chapter, paragraph, or page and read the last sentence of that section. (Don’t read the sentence itself backward—it won’t make any sense.) Next, read the second-to-last sentence, and so on. This will allow you to work at the sentence level, catching any unintended repetition or other small mistakes that your brain naturally skims over.

Consult a thesaurus. So you’ve found a repeated word. Now what? You can try rearranging your sentence to get rid of the repeated word, or you can keep the sentence the same and plug in a different word in its place. If you’re at a loss, consult a thesaurus for a list of synonyms. You want your writing to sound like you, and to be accessible to your audience, so it’s best to avoid using words you aren’t familiar with. But if you find yourself unintentionally repeating the same word over and over, a thesaurus can help you identify another word that more precisely captures your meaning.

Some Writing Strategies to Avoid Repetition

Excerpts from writing tips on repetition by Dr. Ryan Shirey:

While repetition is not an inherently bad thing (and can quite often be used to great effect as in the classical rhetorical technique of anaphora), most of us want to make sure that we’re not boring our readers by saying the same things over and over again without any variation or development.

If you’re worried about repeating ideas, then one of the easiest and most illuminating things that you can do is to reverse outline your draft. When you reverse outline, you take your draft and distill each idea and piece of evidence back into an outline. Some writers like to do this in the margins and others prefer a separate sheet of paper. Whatever your preference, a reverse outline will let you see rather clearly whether or not you’ve returned to the same idea or piece of evidence multiple times in the same essay. If you find that you have, you can think about rearranging or cutting paragraphs as necessary.

Another strategy if you’re worried about repeating ideas is to use different colored highlighters, colored pencils, or coloring tools in a word processing program to mark areas of your text where you’re working on specific ideas. If I’m writing a paper on the history of the run up to World War I, for example, I might decide to mark all the areas where I discuss treaty arrangements in green, all the areas where I discuss colonial expansion in blue, the parts that discuss arms manufacturing and trade in red, and so on. Once I’ve visualized these ideas with color, I can see more easily whether or not I keep returning to the same topics or whether I need to restructure any portions of my essay. Be careful, though–you don’t want to create artificial distinctions that might negatively impact your overall point. For instance, if a conflict over colonial expansion leads to a treaty arrangement, I would need to be very careful about using the context in which I’m discussing that treaty dictate how I code that sentence or paragraph.

If you’re worried about repeating words or phrases, you can use the “find” feature in your word processing program to highlight all of the instances where you’ve used it. Once you’ve identified the problem areas, you can look for ways to combine sentences using coordination or subordination, replace nouns with pronouns, or (very carefully) use a thesaurus to diversify your vocabulary.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References

Hope this helps with your writing!

[sebby1986]

YAYY THANK U SM

I'm gonna struggle so hard to find 10 ppl to tag but it's ok!!! Trust.

1. Mr Green (Clue: the Movie)

2. Dracula (Dracula)

3. The Bride (Kill Bill)

4. Crowley (Good Omens)

5. George McFly (Back to the Future)

6. Madeline Ashton (Death Becomes Her)

7. Willow Ufgood (Willow)

8. Charles Carson (Downton Abbey)

9. The Joker (Batman: the Animated Series)

10. The Sergeant (Pirates of Penzance)

Not ranked by how much I like them they're all on the same level.

P.S.- sorry if I tagged you and you're like "who even is this guy??" I picked random ppl I'm following when I ran out of close friends lol

Tagging: @plasticviolence @froginajesterhat @ineffably-flynn @minecrafttortie @ellovett @little-lovett @vyvernnn @bamsara @someone-kill-the-ej @clytemokiwie

10 Characters, 10 Fandoms

Didn't reblog the original because the list was getting super long and scrolling through was like that scene from Sponge Out of Water where they travel back in time (/j). So to keep it neat, maybe make your own post like this where possible lol /nf

(Thank you for tagging me, @stargazerlillian! :D)

RULES: Make a post where you list ten of your favourite characters from ten separate fandoms, then tag ten people.

Here we go, then:

Squidward Tentacles (SpongeBob SquarePants)

Bradley Uppercrust III (An Extremely Goofy Movie)

Wheatley (Portal 2)

Daffy Duck (Looney Tunes)

Shaggy Rogers (Scooby-Doo! Where Are You?)

Matthew Corbett (The Sooty Show)

Greg Dillard (The Outlaws)

Darren Lamb (Extras)

Trixie Lulamoon (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)

Jon Arbuckle (Garfield and Friends)

(There's a few more characters I like, but for one point, I cannot pick between Dr Flug and Miss Heed from Villainous and I cannot put both, so they can be my "honourable mentions" - same for Phoenix Wright and the rest I can't mention because they're aren't enough slots, LOL).

Tagging: @thatofabeavers / @shookrrighteous / @madbutchkisser / @four-raccoons-in-a-trenchcoat / @softies-only

@wheatlev / @fandomloserg / @sebby1986 / @caronaro-flipaclip

[dathen]

For new readers wondering when we’ll get the iconic scene of Dracula sensually drinking from Lucy or carrying her bridal-style: we won’t. It doesn’t exist. The most contact we see is a shadow standing behind her or a large bird at the window. The book doesn’t sexualize Lucy and Dracula’s encounters at all (ironically, in contrast to his encounters with Jonathan).

We know he is feeding on her—like a leech, like an infection, but everything beyond that is in the mind of the beholder. She’s a woman and a victim, therefore Stoker must be punishing her for her sexuality, therefore she must be responsible for her own pain, therefore we gotta make it Hot.